Benevolent Dictator

Time marches in, right on cue,
asks for his just due
holds the weapon of every choice
in the cloak that bares concealment.

Hey, but that's just for starters, we don't get the menu
until much, much later. There's nothing to eat but what wastes
away,
hunger manifests in each and every statue,
deep-veined in human blood
willing to come to life,
to be alive in dreamscapes, near and far;

motes of dust we travel well,
never break the silence of wild geese
with impossible intervention

precious are the few who get it right
the first time around,
the bare tree has no leaf of its own,
though the sentinel pines hear it all,

pumpkin seeds must grow round and orange,
mushrooms can be deadly ever more the beautiful
frogs paint themselves in dayglow colours, tip their tiny
suction feet with "do not touch".

Poets write
as if their breath demanded air, walking into every golden sunset
on makeshift clouds like rainbow serpents,
hushing the madding crowd;

the sea is ablaze in the third eye of chance,
there is witchery and bewilderment,
every horizon meets in sunrise and the grand puppetry
of strings we tie
and unravel day by day
until nothing remains but the lotus blossom,
opening
like deep-rooted poems, twice-told Shakespearan tales,
once denied and offered on that purloined plate;

ours is a yellow touring bus on a journey to Ixtlan, neither here nor there,
never coming and never leaving,
nearer than the blink of an I,
calling from the primeval eve, listening
listening, listening,
war-zone medics, shaman clergy and mythic mystics,
musician--poets struck blind,
our ancestors pounding at the keyboard, looking into the distance
already passed.